A formula for creating a movie with stink on it

Take this to the bank: the more big stars cast into a single movie, the more likely you’ll be making your grocery list while watching it. Here’s a great example, opening this weekend: Valentine’s Day (keep an eye on the MetaCritic site for the latest reviews). Before breaking down this bag of turd, let’s go to the preview:

I saw that preview last weekend when I went to the movies, and was so shocked I screamed out, “I don’t like any star in that movie!” Really. There’s not one star in Valentine’s Day that makes me buy a movie ticket. That’s why studios cast stars into movies; people buy movie tickets because of their favorite stars. Kind of sad, really. Story and script can have so little influence for some people, they’ll skip a great movie like The Cove.

That preview has red flags all over the place:

towhead kids in a romantic “comedy” (why can’t adults have a romance without kids muscling in on the action?)

amusing absentmindedness (“it’s Valentine’s Day today? I thought it fell on a Thursday?” … that’s funny?)

old and young people talking about sex (aren’t the generational differences cute … but non-threatening).

“At the end of the day, it’s all about love.” (really, is my life reduced to that? I have to depend on love from someone else to feel good about myself?)

The woman that is too good for the guy (well, the guy is Ashton Kutcher, so I’ll buy that).

One element to creating a crappy movie is having a reviewer mark it as “the perfect date movie,” which Toni Gonzalez from WNBC-TV did. A “date movie” means that you’re paying attention to your date, not on the movie, so who the hell cares about it. A great example of this isÂ Date Movie, which is listed as one of the worst movies of the decade on MetaCritic. For movie lovers, the studio did us a huge favor with that title.